Scrappy Baa-ble

One of the benefits of being a Compulsive End Hoarder is that sometimes (very occasionally) you have exactly what you need to make a hot new pattern from stash.

You know when you come across a pattern that you MUST drop everything and make? For me, they are usually small things; hats, mittens, etc. The heavier the yarn weight, the more likely I am to cast on, no matter what’s already on the needles. When I saw Donna Smith‘s playful sheepy hat Baa-Ble, I wanted to cast on that moment.

I don’t know what you do with your partial half-balls (or quarter-balls, or eighth-balls) when you finish a project, but I save mine. I have all kinds of rationalizations.

The finished item may need to be repaired at some future date, and I will have the ends on hand. Never mind that I have mountains of leftovers from projects that are long gone.

I tell myself I may want to make a “matching” something in the future and I will have exactly the right color.

I dream some other project will come along and it will only call for a small amount of yarn, and this will be exactly the right color for the job. I will be saving money in the future because I won’t need to buy new yarn. I tell myself.

The result is, we have enough yarn in the house that we should be getting a tax rebate for having Green insulation. But, in this case, the result was also that I had exactly what I needed. I was able to case on the moment I stumbled across the pattern. A sweater from 2008, slippers from 2010, and two different hats from 2010 and 2011 left behind enough yarn for me to knit one Baa-ble in 2015. It took three years to take photos–aside from a few awkward selfies that were a “placeholder” on Ravelry for far too long.

This super cute hat whipped up in no time. The sheep were so fun that I just couldn’t stop until they were done. Once I finished the sheep, I was basically at the crown, then poof, done. This was an extremely satisfying snap of a pattern. It’s drawn a fair handful of “cute hat” comments from random strangers–ok, yes, usually older women, but sometimes creepy men. Public Transportation ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. My version is quite slouchy. I guess I could’ve gone down a needle size to tighten the gauge up slightly, but it drapes nicely.